


The Roots Of Rhythm Remain

by sabinelagrande



Series: The Rhythm of the Saints [4]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Challenge: house big bang, Kid Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-30
Updated: 2008-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-11 00:34:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg, Lisa, James, and Evan, and how their story goes on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Roots Of Rhythm Remain

### negotiations and love songs

The plans start accidentally (on purpose), and a long, hard war is fought to keep them going. In all fairness, it's a good time for it; the last of the name changes is finally getting settled, and the hospital is relatively drama-free.

Evan is duly consulted on the matter, requests that cupcakes be served, and goes back to coloring.

James, in a stroke of blind luck (and only in New Jersey), finds someone to write the ketubah and a (former, which is honestly probably better in this situation) rabbi who thinks this is all really a rather good idea.

From the deepest, darkest depths of her aunt's attic, Lisa recovers her mother's wedding dress. Then she remembers that her mother was married in 1961, and back into storage it goes. Perhaps Evan will wear it some day, if she happens to be blinded before then.

Greg contemplates how much he'll have to slip the organist to play "LA Woman" for the recessional, but they finally compromise on that one Bach piece that sounds like God coming down from the heavens (probably to smite them, which is fine--he figures they probably deserve it).

They seem to plan in shifts: James, until he realizes he actually has an opinion on napkin folding; Lisa, until the check for the DJ ends up under a stack of purchase orders for bariatrics and is never seen again; Greg, until no caterer in the tri-state area will speak to him anymore; back to James. James, at the end of his rope, hires a wedding planner (the first one who doesn't bat an eyelash when he explains what's going on gets the job). She turns out to be a terrifyingly efficient little woman with the strategic genius of a five-star general.

Greg crosses her once--only once. After listening to his diatribe, she smiles (at least, she parts her lips and shows her teeth, but the effect is more like being stared down by a tiger than anything), just smiles, and repeats her statement as if she hasn't heard him. It's just about the scariest thing Greg has ever seen. He immediately offers her a job as his secretary, and he is incredibly surprised to find that he feels genuinely sad when she doesn't take him up on it.

It doesn't start to be real, really, until the relatives start showing up. Team Wilson moves in a week early and takes up all the extra space in their house. Lisa vainly attempts to pretend she can cook for the first three days (if that isn't bad enough, they seem to think they need to eat together, which just leads to lots of awkward silence), until brother Bradley relieves them all by bringing home Thai food.

Mrs. Cuddy is next, and it takes serious negotiation to keep her from setting up camp on the bedroom floor. Her sole occupation in life seems to be to feed her granddaughter candy, which is just fine by Evan, who responds by running around the house twenty-six times in a row (she's pretty sure it's a world record, but nobody will let her call the Guinness people to check, which is just unfair).

Blythe shows up, alone, the day before the rehearsal; that's James and Greg's cue to run off to the hospital (after convincing everyone that people are dying, the place is a blood bath, body parts are flying off the shelves, etc.), where they proceed to barricade themselves in House's office and do tequila shots until dawn.

Cameron drives up from Washington, and Foreman flies in from Boston; plus Evan and Chase, that gives them all the attendants they can really stand. When they're all together for the rehearsal, they make such a stunning wedding party that one can almost forget that it took a three week fight (with Greg), four hours total of long distance phone calls (between Foreman and Cameron), and six hours of excused clinic duty (for Chase) to get everyone (to at least pretend to be) in agreement.

Greg wakes up early on the appointed day, and he spends fifteen minutes just staring at himself in the mirror, wondering how the hell he got to this point.

Lisa hides in her mother's hotel room all day, being spoiled and chastised in turns.

James turns off his cell phone and takes Evan to the park for an hour, because it's that or start hitting the champagne.

Evan almost, almost gets her swing over the crossbar, and she remains convinced for several weeks that she would have made it if only Dad hadn't decided it was time to go.

Despite all odds, everybody gets to the church at something approaching the correct time, and the wedding planner kicks into overdrive, choreographing the whole thing with down to the minute precision (Lisa pulls her aside and offers to double whatever Greg has offered). The guests are seated, the music starts, and the panic sets in.

Evan, in full flower girl mode and pursued by Chase, ends up throwing her petals at people instead of dropping them (Lisa and James, thankfully, miss Greg slipping her five bucks to do it). Foreman and Cameron follow, Cameron holding his arm uncomfortably, Foreman with a smile on his face that says that he's going to wake up any minute in his nice warm bed in Boston, and this will all have been a very strange dream.

Somehow, the wedding party ends up placed around the chuppah, staring wide-eyed at each other and shifting back and forth. Cameron jumps when the organist unexpectedly goes into the wedding march from Lohenghrin (old habits die hard).

The entire world stops when Lisa enters the room.

She's ridiculously radiant, her shoulders thrown back, somehow carelessly regal. Her every step says that she owns this moment, that anybody who isn't watching her is missing the main event. When Greg elbows him, James realizes with a blush that he's been staring at her open mouthed.

Her mentor from college--a short, sharp dressed man with silver hair and a cheery face--walks her down the aisle (Greg, hearing her choice after another tense negotiation with Cameron, went on a five minute speech about how doctors are forever condemned to other doctors). He's about a hundred years old (Evan thinks to herself), and it's more that Lisa's escorting him than the other way around; but between the two of them, they're beaming bright enough to blind.

She struts her way down that aisle and takes her appointed place, and Greg just barely restrains himself from grabbing her ass (who's to say he hasn't grown up?).

The real thing finally, finally starts. The rabbi starts by explaining about how love is long suffering, and Lisa loses it, snickering loud enough for the whole front row to hear her. "Damn straight," James replies, sotto voce, and Greg glares at both of them, trying not to smile.

Later, during their "did this really happen" drink, Chase will show a gaping Cameron the thick bruise House's grip left on his arm (despite this display of machismo, she will completely fail to go home with him).

When the rabbi finally exhorts them to kiss the bride, they realize that, though they've fought out everything else, they've completely forgotten this moment. As if they've planned it, both Greg and James head for Lisa, who catches them on either cheek. The portion of the audience that doesn't secretly think they're all going to hell thinks it's all perfectly heartwarming.

When they're introduced, Lisa throws back her head and laughs, as if they've pulled one over on the universe.

### and the music seeping through

"You've got bubbles under your hands."

"Kay."

"And if you let your hands fall, they're going to pop, because they're made from the cheap bubble liquid from the Dollar Tree."

"Kay."

"And if they pop, the noise will wake the neighbor's dog."

"Won't the piano wake him up?"

"No. He's been very specially and highly trained to attack anyone popping bubbles, but he likes music."

"Why?"

"Because the people next door are crazy. You've seen their Christmas lights."

"Kay."

"Just keep your hands arched, and you'll be fine."

"Then I hit the middle C?"

"Good. Now the E and the G."

"Like this?"

"Yes. That's a C major chord. Now move your middle finger to the black key. That's a C minor chord."

"Major, minor?"

"Exactly."

"What's the difference?"

"The minor chords are much, much cooler."

"Why?"

"You'll understand when you're older. Now, if you play the notes in the middle one at a time, that makes a pentascale."

"Major pentascale, minor pentascale?"

"Very good. And that's everything you need to know to play the blues. Wait here while I get my guitar."

### rather be a hammer than a nail 

"You have your daddy's eyes," Mr. House tells her, scrutinizing her face.

"I have my poppa's eyes," Evan corrects, staring hard back at him.

He sighs and offers his hand to her. She ignores it, climbing up into the car by herself. "This family never bred anything but damn willful kids," he mutters.

Mr. House walks around and climbs into the driver's seat. Evan sits stiffly, her arms crossed awkwardly on her lap.

"Buckle your seatbelt," she chides as he starts the car. He looks at her for a moment, but complies, shrugging.

There's nothing much to say, after that, so he turns the radio on. It's old, twangy country music, which Evan has never liked, but she doesn't feel like saying anything.

This was all her grandmother's idea (naturally), and Evan loves her grandmother to death; but it's a long, long way to the house, and she's starting to wonder if she shouldn't have begged to ride back with her dad.

It all feels impossibly wrong. She's been brought up in a sort of reverential loathing of Mr. House. Her poppa talks about him like most people talk about the boogeyman--not quite the Devil, but he's certainly got his phone number. But he hasn't raised a hand to her or tried to carry her off into the night; and he certainly doesn't look as evil as she was expecting.

"Poppa says you're a bad man," she tells him after a long silence, not knowing what else to talk about other than what's on her mind.

"I'm sure your pop thinks that," he replies, not looking at her.

"Are you?"

"No," he tells her. "Not anymore."

"That's good," she says, not really believing him.

He sighs. "Sometimes adults have to do things, things that aren't very nice, so that they can keep order. And it's not fun, and it's not pleasant for anybody, but it has to get done." Evan nods mutely, and he continues. "And when it's done, it's best to forgive and forget." His expression is cryptic. "Your father never learned that."

He's so earnest when he says it that Evan doesn't know if she can not believe him. More than anything, she's struck by how much like her father he sounds (even though it doesn't sound like anything her father would ever say).

They lapse back into silence after that; neither of them is the type for small talk. Evan has the funniest feeling that she's going to get debriefed when she gets home. Thankfully, she falls asleep after not too much longer, lulled by the sound of the truck's diesel engine.

Mr. House helps her out of the truck when they get to the house, leading her over to her mother. She's almost bracing herself for the moment when he and Poppa meet; Poppa's jaw is clenched tight, but Mr. House doesn't seem to see where the problem is.

"Brought her back in one piece," Mr. House says, and Poppa doesn't respond.

"Thank you, John," her mother replies sweetly.

"Hope I see you soon," Mr. House tells them, mussing Evan's hair affectionately, and gets back in his truck.

Poppa still doesn't say anything, turning back for the house, and Evan's left to wonder what in the world just happened.

"He always said I'd understand when I had kids of my own," she overhears later. "He lied."

### the man with the girl by his side 

Evan's mother helps her get ready, lifting her up in front of the vanity so that she can check her lip gloss one more time.

"This isn't just a little bit creepy to you?" Greg asks James as they watch from the doorway.

"Of course not," he replies, as if it's a preposterous suggestion. "I think it's cute."

"This is Chase we're talking about here. You know where he's been."

"No, I don't." He puts up a hand before Greg can open his mouth. "And you're not going to tell me, because I know where you sleep."

Greg shrugs. "When you end up crying on the TV like Patsy Ramsey, don't say I didn't warn you."

The doorbell rings precisely at seven o'clock. When Evan opens the door, Dr. Chase offers her a bouquet of daisies.

"Happy birthday," he tells her, smiling.

She blushes, taking it from him, barely about to squeak out a thank you.

"Don't stay out too late," Lisa tells him over Evan's head, giving him a look that speaks volumes (mostly on the subjects of "I sign your checks" and "I own many, many sharp knives"), and Chase gulps visibly.

Dr. Chase's beat up old Mazda is not quite the roan steed she had in mind; but he lets her open the sun roof, so that's something. The restaurant, however, is a little more like it, tucked away in the really pretty, really expensive looking part of Princeton.

He holds open the door for her, extending a gallant hand to offer her the foyer. She giggles a little behind her hand, stepping inside. He gives his name to the man behind the podium, before leading Evan to a nearby bench to wait.

Chase catches the maitre d' looking back and forth between him and Evan, as if he's trying to figure out which of the many girls he's brought here is the mother of this child. He doesn't have long to wonder, though, because their table is ready promptly at seven-fifteen.

They are shown to their chairs, and Evan (despite her attempts to be extremely urbane and sophisticated) can't help giggle a little when the waiter pulls hers out for her, presenting her napkin with a flourish. Chase orders for both of them, smoothly rolling the French phrases off his tongue (in a heavy Australian accent and with absolutely no regard for their actual pronunciation, but who's counting?).

The conversation flows surprisingly easily over the food (Evan's never been one to be relegated to the kids' table, after all). Chase is only slightly embarrassed by the fact that she may very well be the most intelligent girl he's taken on a date in a long while.

"Have you ever been married?" she asks him over the entrée (surprising him--most of Chase's dates only wait until the salad).

He shakes his head. "I was engaged once, but that's it."

"But you didn't marry her?"

"She thought it was time to move away," he tells her, with a shrug. "I didn't."

"Was she pretty?" she asks, stabbing at her food in an entirely transparent attempt to hide her jealousy.

He nods. "She was very, very pretty, and very smart, too."

Evan purses her lips (it's just her luck). "I bet she was sweet."

"Actually, she was pretty mean, to tell the truth," he tells her, with a funny sort of smile on his face.

"Are you going to get married?"

He rolls his eyes. "I don't think so. I'm too old."

"I'll marry you," she says, a little too eagerly.

Chase tries so hard not to laugh at her, but he can't help it. "Maybe when you're a little bit older."

He orders bananas foster to help her through her disappointment (because any heartache can be cured by dessert or setting things on fire--and especially by desserts set on fire).

They walk along the street after dinner, Chase resting his arm companionably on her shoulders (with some difficulty, as she's a foot and a half shorter than he is). He buys her a necklace with a butterfly dangling from it from a shop nearby (it's ridiculously girly, but Evan's feeling ridiculously girly at the moment, so it works).

He gets her back to her doorway by the very stroke of ten o'clock (scanning the windows for any sign of Cuddy wielding a butcher's knife).

"I had a great time," Evan tells him.

Chase bends down and gives her a kiss on the top of the head. "Me too," he says, smiling.

Evan reaches for, and completely misses, the doorknob, fumbling her way into the house. "Good night," she squeaks, turning ten shades of red.

"Show me on the doll where--" is as far as Greg gets before James elbows him hard in the stomach.

### don't need to discuss much 

"I'm glad you came out," she says, smiling at him. "You deserve a break."

James smiles at her, taking a sip from his cocktail. "I'm glad you invited me."

The conversation is inane at best, but luckily, that's not really what they're here for. It's what they're not saying that actually matters--the way she absentmindedly twirls her finger in her hair, the way he shifts almost imperceptibly forward when she speaks.

She doesn't bat an eye when he picks up the check, just smiles sweetly, placing her hand over his.

* * *

Cuddy is still at the hospital, which probably comes as no surprise to anyone. The caterer for the fundraising dinner has backed out, radiology was supposed to have submitted their budget three weeks ago, she's on her period, and the babysitter won't stop calling, even though she knows good and well she's supposed to call Greg if she needs anything.

And James won't answer his phone.

* * *

Her apartment is surprisingly spacious, tastefully decorated in what he recognizes vaguely as last season's hot colors. Vague is the best that he gets on the décor, because then she's breaking out the wine. He can hear himself babbling on about how nice it was to live in Quebec, but neither of them is paying any attention to what he's saying.

He realizes that he's been staring at her lips around the time she presses them to his.

* * *

"Cancer," Rogers says, sipping his coffee.

"Infection," Allen counters, shaking her head.

Brinker finally comes in, hanging his winter coat on the rack. "Lupus?" he tries, when he realizes that everyone is looking at him expectantly.

"Wrong--" Greg points to Allen, who rolls her eyes, "--and wrong," he finishes, pointing to Brinker, who shrugs and heads for the coffee maker. "Get an MRI, and I'll get an oncologist. I know a good one," he says, pseudoconfidentially, to Rogers, who blushes predictably, "in the Biblical sense."

But James won't answer his phone.

* * *

He's actually forgotten how incredibly easy this is, which really says something about both his mental state and the state of his relationship. She seems happy to do all the work, and he's content to let her. Nobody has to be ginger with anybody else, nobody gets left out, and nobody's going to have to stop halfway through to pretend to care about a macaroni picture.

But he can't get off, and he doesn't know what to think about that.

* * *

Greg is late getting home, and Lisa is later still. They eat cold fish sticks that the babysitter burned, snapping back and forth at one another (they're not mad at each other, _per se_; it's just that they're both angry and conveniently collocated).

Lisa goes to bed, dropping immediately into a restless, irritable sleep. She keeps Greg awake with her tossing and turning, and he ends up going back downstairs to watch late night cartoons (something about a cup and some fries that he really doesn't know if he's supposed to find funny). At three AM, he picks up the handset and dials, giving it one last try.

And James still won't answer his phone.

But by then, Greg has figured out why.

### Graceland 

Poppa picks her up from daycare an hour early. The first thing she notices is that he's on the Commando instead of his racing bike, even though she's more than small enough to ride behind him on it.

"Why are we taking the big bike?" she asks, strapping her backpack on tighter.

"We're going on a surprise vacation," he tells her, handing Evan her helmet.

"Are Dad and Mom coming?"

He turns his face away from her, putting on his own helmet. "They'll probably get there before we do."

Even though she's only nine, Evan is still smart enough to figure out that something's up. She decides not to ask, though, and climbs up behind him. She's sure Poppa knows what he's doing, for now.

It's a long, long way to Tennessee, and Evan understands very quickly why they're on the touring bike. Poppa's intent on driving through the night, and Evan keeps dozing off against him, glad that there's an actual seat to stop her from falling headlong into traffic.

She finally nods off somewhere in Kentucky. When she wakes up, it's midday, and she's in an unfamiliar room. Poppa is asleep beside her, so she pads quietly over to the window and looks out. There's a river and a pyramid, and Evan isn't quite sure she knows where in the world they are.

"C'mon," Poppa tells her, walking up behind her. "We're going to see the king."

Evan looks herself up and down, then squints up at him. "Should I put on a dress?"

He laughs. "I don't think he's going to mind."

The king ends up being out for the day, but his palace is open, and Evan decides that what she really needs most in life is a room that looks like a jungle and a pink Cadillac. Afterwards, Poppa takes her to the zoo, but around the second sleeping lion, they both get tired of it. They go back down into the city, and _Man of La Mancha_ is playing at the Orpheum. Poppa gets all excited and buys them tickets to the matinee.

By the time the show is over, Evan's pretty much decided that her new goal in life is to be the lady of a knight errant. She tells Poppa, who (after assuring her that it's a fabulous idea with real long term advancement possibilities) immediately takes her down to Schwab's and buys her a cheap Spanish fan.

After dinner (ribs, which Poppa is absolutely over the moon about), they walk back to their hotel room. The hotel is very nice; the doorman smiles and winks at Evan, and Poppa teases her about it all the way up.

"Can we call Mom and Dad?" Evan asks, putting her bag down on the chair.

Poppa hesitates. "Not yet, but they'll be here soon enough."

Evan isn't sure why, but she knows Poppa's lying to her. "How soon?"

"Probably by the morning," he replies, not looking at her, and turns the TV on.

"Then how come they didn't come with us?"

He clicks through the channels, pretending to be distracted. "They're very busy."

"Aren't you very busy?"

He sets down the remote and narrows his eyes at her. "Sometimes I wish you were your mother's child."

"We're not on vacation, are we?"

"Not really." Poppa sighs. "Your dad did something that he shouldn't have done, something that he told your mom and me that he wasn't going to do again." He pauses. "At least without inviting us along, anyway," he adds under his breath.

"So, you're angry at Dad?"

"Yes, but not because he made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes."

"Then why?"

"Because he thinks that there's no going back from the mistake he made," he said, looking up at the ceiling. "He believes that your mom and I are unforgiving people, and he's unforgivable. But I know that you know that people who love each other also forgive each other, and Dad's a lot taller and better educated than you are."

Evan screws up her face, not really getting it. "So, since Dad screwed up, we had to go away?"

"This is very important, so remember it," he tells her, and she nods her head, listening intently. "Sometimes the only way to make some people listen to you is to do something incredibly stupid. And your dad can be that kind of person."

"Did Dad listen?"

"I don't know yet," he admits. "What's going to happen is that Mom and Dad are going to come and see us, and we're going to have a fight, and then you'll go back home."

"Are you gonna come too?"

Poppa lets out a deep breath. "I don't know yet. Now, don't tell Mom and Dad I gave away the ending, or I'll tell them both about your unrequited love for Doctor Chase."

Evan gives him her best haughty face. "What if he..." She stopped, struggling for the right word.

"Requites."

"Requites it?"

Poppa laughs. "Then I'll break both his knees."

She falls asleep to the sounds of the ten o'clock news, Poppa stroking her hair.

Evan wakes him up early the next morning, but by the time they get back from breakfast, Dad is already waiting for them in the lobby of the hotel.

"I thought you said Mom was going to come," Evan tells him, but he isn't listening. It's deadly quiet in the elevator on the way back up to the room. When they get there, Poppa hands her his iPod and tells her to go and read a book. Evan puts the headphones on but turns the volume off, wanting to see if Poppa's right.

She's barely got them on when Dad starts in on Poppa. "You kidnapped my child."

"No, I took my child on a vacation without telling you," Poppa tells him. "Because, y'know, she is my child."

"This isn't funny, House."

"I'm not joking, _Jimmy_."

"You can't just do this!"

"So call CPS on me!" he yells back at her. "See just how willing they'd be to let a child stay in a house like ours!"

Dad looks furious. "So you're, you're blackmailing us? For what?"

"You slept with a nurse. So what?"

"I cheated on you, and you're the one who's saying it's no big deal?"

Evan's almost afraid of the look on Poppa's face. "Of course it's a big deal! You lied to us! What do you want me to do, tell you you're a bad boy, send you to bed without dinner?"

Dad is red in the face. "I want you to stop pretending like this isn't going to affect us!"

"What's her last name?"

Dad stops, bewildered. "What?"

Poppa takes a breath, calming himself before repeating his question. "What's her last name?"

"It's--" Dad pauses, grabbing for the answer, "it's--"

"Yeah, this is all about how much she's going to change our life. Vanessa--whose last name is Robertson, by the way--is definitely in the running for the next Mrs. Wilson," Poppa snorts. "You're not in love with her. You only want to leave because it's what you think you should do when you screw up. You do something wrong, you just leave so you don't have to deal with the consequences. Plus, you get the added bonus of claiming it's hurting you as much as it's hurting us."

Poppa's clearly gained the advantage, so Dad tries distraction. "Don't you even want to know why?"

"I don't give a damn why you did it."

Dad rolls his eyes. "Yes, you do. It's going to drive you nuts."

Poppa looks away from him. "Would knowing do me any kind of good?"

Dad looks at him like he's just grown an extra head. "You're, you're you. You have to know. It's who you are."

Poppa smiles, but it's more like a grimace. "Maybe not this time. Maybe this time I just want you to not fuck up again."

Dad rakes his hand through his hair, looking relieved and ashamed. "The next time you want to prove a point to me, can't you just do it in the living room, instead of across the country?"

Poppa's expression is unreadable. "I wanted to see if you would come."

He opens his mouth and closes it again without speaking, looking deeply hurt. "If you don't know that by now--"

"I didn't say I didn't know. I said I wanted to see." Poppa clears his throat, seeming vaguely uncomfortable. "Your job is to put your big boy pants on and convince Lisa to see it my way, or we're both screwed."

"What are we going to tell Evan?"

Poppa shrugs. "I figured we'd just tell her to take off the headphones and stop pretending like she's not listening."

Dad scowls at Poppa. "House, she's not old enough to hear this."

"She's old enough to get hurt when you leave."

Blushing, Evan sheepishly takes off the headphones. Dad kneels down beside her, wiping off the tears that she didn't really know were there. "Honey, I wasn't ever going to leave you--"

Poppa cuts him off. "She's old enough not to believe that crap, either. You leave one of us, you leave all of us."

The possibility is more than she can handle, and she throws her arms around her Daddy's neck. He holds her tight, stroking her hair and mumbling sweet, meaningless things.

She barely hears the knock at the door, but suddenly Mom is there, and she slaps Poppa right in the face.

"Missed you too," he says, rubbing at his jaw. She calls him a dirty name, crossing her arms and staring him down. "It's Jimmy's fault."

"Are you done with this little adventure?" she asks him.

"More or less," he answers with a shrug, and she swears at him again.

"It's okay," Dad tells her. She gives him a look that clearly says not to interrupt when the grown ups are talking. After a tense moment, she sighs, her shoulders slumping slightly.

Mom hands Poppa a paper folder, and he thumbs through it. "There are only three tickets here. I don't know if you've noticed, but the kid's a little big to go in the overhead."

She smirks at him. "I'm taking the bike."

He takes another look. "You bought me a ticket before you even asked if I was going to come home."

"Of course you're going to come home," she tells him, rolling her eyes. "Number one, you hate change, and number two, I own you."

"She's got a point," Dad agrees.

"Jimmy, the grown ups are talking," Poppa tells him (confirming Evan's suspicions).

"Now pack," she tells them, pointing at the bed. Dad looks at Poppa and shrugs, picking up a discarded sock.

Evan walks over to her mom, hugging her leg. "Do you want to get some lunch before you go to the airport, sweetheart?" Mom asks, petting her hair.

She nods, and Mom offers her a hand. "I saw a tiger," Evan says, because she's still not really sure she knows what just happened, and it's the only topic of conversation that sounds appropriate at the moment.

Mom just looks at her for a moment, turning her head to the side as if she's a little bit amazed. She opens her mouth as if to say something, but she sighs instead. "Was it a big tiger?" she asks finally, leading her out the door.

### as I didn't know my own bed

Greg is condemned to the guest bedroom for a full three weeks after his stunt with Evan, which is lucky for him, because Jimmy is stuck on the couch for his stunt with the nurse.

It's probably supposed to be more than three weeks, but that's where he draws the line on being kicked out of his own bed (it's Lisa's property, technically, but he figures he can make a pretty good legal argument for at least a third of it).

He bangs into the bedroom while Lisa is trying to brush her teeth. She gives him a significant look (which is the best she can manage, under the circumstances), finishing her nightly routine.

"Fuck you," he calls to the bathroom, climbing into the center of their big bed. "I know now why people don't come to see us. You've got them sleeping on a concrete slab."

Lisa (too tired to fight or to point out exactly why nobody comes over) just rolls her eyes and gets in next to him. Her original intention is to sleep as far to one side as she can, almost hanging off the edge, but that lasts about ten minutes before Greg pulls her back in, cushioning his bad leg with her thighs.

"The dreaded cripple leg lock," she says sleepily, nestling into his arms.

"I can keep you in my thrall through the sheer force of guilt alone," he agrees, kissing along her neck while she falls asleep.

Downstairs, James and his daughter eat Pixy Stix and watch cartoons until two AM, their own personal way of sticking it to the man.

It takes the other one another week to realize that he's not banished anymore--or it would have, if in the end Greg hadn't just grabbed him by the tie and carried him off to their room.

This is all brand new territory for James. The whole cheating dance he's very familiar with, but the making up afterwards, not so much. He's never actually been in the sort of relationship that could weather that sort of thing (three failed marriages should provide ample proof of this fact), and, to be quite honest, he hadn't known until very recently that he was in one that could.

Greg and Lisa are lightly squabbling over something unimportant, and so he quietly readies for bed, still feeling like he's trespassing. He finds himself between them in bed, and Lisa reaches for the light, relaxing next to him like nothing is wrong anymore.

"Um," James says shakily, awkwardly putting his hand on her hip. "So."

Lisa makes an extremely undignified noise and turns toward him. "When did you turn into a teenage girl?"

Greg brightens. "My birthday wish came true?"

There is, without a doubt, much, much more where that came from, but James heads it off, rolling towards him and kissing him quiet (not just because he can't think of anything appropriate to say). Lisa doesn't waste her time, leaning in close to kiss at his neck, pushing her hand into his boxers. He can't resist going back and forth between the two of them, trading Greg's long, slow kisses for Lisa's urgent ones, over and over, until it really does feel like he's never left.

Lisa leans over him to whisper something (probably something unprintable) into Greg's ear; Greg looks at her as if he's more than a little bit scandalized (it must have been very, very good). But then Lisa lets him in on the secret, and it is very, very good indeed.

It's a tricky bit of maneuvering to get Lisa on top of Greg, made trickier by the fact that James is in that peculiar, sex-driven state of not being able to figure out exactly how his (or anybody else's) limbs work. But she does get there, and James (though he's probably seen it hundreds of times now) can't help but watch as she slides down around him. Greg lifts his face up to hers, kissing her hungrily for a moment. James breaks away reluctantly, rooting around in the nightstand for lubrication before kneeling behind her, in between Greg's legs.

He lays a hand on her hip, fingers reaching down to find her clit (without, he suspects, much success, but no one's complaining). He lines himself up with the other hand, very slowly sliding into her.

With both of them inside her, Lisa looks absolutely transported, lying back, rag doll limp against him. Greg only has enough mental capacity left to blaspheme, rocking into her over and over again. James does his best to match his rhythm, his hands reaching up to Lisa's breasts. Some wild, mad part of him still believes that this is definitely all some weird sugar-induced wish fulfillment dream.

The three lifetimes' worth of tension he's accumulated in the past three weeks all seem to pour out of him when he comes, and Lisa and Greg aren't far behind him. Sated, James and Lisa sort of slide (in an entirely undignified manner) onto the bed next to Greg.

"You're going to be the death of me," Lisa murmurs into his chest.

"It was your idea," Greg reminds her, prodding her playfully with his elbow. "Get a towel," he says, waving a hand imperiously at James.

James snorts. "I'm too busy being all sexed out, if it's the same to you."

Greg shakes his head. "You know you automatically lose every argument for the next year, right?"

"He's got a point," Lisa tells him.

"You should be glad of the privilege," he adds, laying it on thick.

Reluctantly, he untangles himself from Lisa, standing up on shaky legs. "Anything else for my masters?" he asks, with mock obsequiousness.

Greg gives her a look. "That's hot."

"Maybe a little," she replies.

"It's better if you picture it with the French maid costume."

She shrugs. "I was thinking more black leather, but that works too."

All James can do is laugh and thank everything he knows that he still has this.

  


### the oldest silence

It had been a joke when he did it. It took all night--the damn glue didn't want to dry, and then he couldn't get the knife into it, and then the pages kept falling all over the floor. But James laughed like he hadn't since Susan left, which was the whole point of the exercise anyway, so he counted it a success.

He's forgotten about it, mostly; the lupus curse seemed to be lifted after his first set of fellows left, and he was forced to get a book that was actually still readable. It's just another pretty book that sits with all the other pretty books and makes him look much more studious than he's ever been.

Until, in the course of reorganizing his bookshelf, he picks it up without thinking, and he hears the rattle.

The book falls open in his palms, and there it is, just like he left it. Ten pills, carefully counted, expertly measured against his pain. He's really surprised that no one caught him (he knows Lisa and James went through his office more than once; he's the one that gave them the keys, after all), but he's far more surprised that he never noticed himself.

Before he knows what he's doing, the Vicodin is in his hand. He hasn't actually seen it since rehab--he understands Princeton-Plainsboro phased it out sometime before he got his DEA license back, and he's always wondered if he didn't have something to do with that.

He realizes with a start that he can't remember how long it's been--that, in and of itself, is more telling than he'd ever admit. His new drugs, all dosed out one at a time, every four hours, each one counted when they think he's not looking, they work--they keep the pain back sometimes--but they don't _feel_ like anything.

And that's what it was, after all, wasn't it? Just something he could feel? It's not as if he doesn't now--he's happier than he's ever been, and some days it feels like he's so goddamned happy that he's going to explode with it.

But it doesn't stop him wanting to swallow every single one of those pills, right after the other, and there's no way to keep from knowing that, now.

He shuts his eyes as he closes the book, sliding it into place between Gray's and _Diagnostic Theory_, right at eye level.

Because no matter how much he changes, he'll never stop being a masochist.

### the chemistry of crying

Evan, like every thirteen-year-old in the history of Western civilization, hates funerals, particularly those for people she doesn't know. She'll have to sit around for four hours in an itchy dress watching her mother talk to people she doesn't recognize, all of whom will look at Evan with misty eyes and tell her how grown up she looks (when the hell did she meet all these old ladies, anyway?). If she cracks a smile, somebody will glare at her, and if she stays somber, someone will tell her to cheer up. Her usually sane mother will get all maudlin and teary eyed, and Evan will feel guilty if she doesn't spend the rest of the day holding her hand. And on top of all that, she will have to wear pantyhose, which (she is convinced) are proof that there is no God.

It's really not helping matters that it's also five AM, and they've got a long drive ahead of them.

They turn up at the church around eleven, and the place is packed. Her mother checks her makeup in the mirror (again), and they set off. Evan barely has time to stretch her legs before Mom's networking, showing her off to people she hasn't seen in thirty years as if it's just so important that they see her.

The only saving grace of the whole thing is that the service itself turns out to be a fairly quick affair. Nobody sobs over the coffin, and at no point does anyone sing anything about how great Jesus is. Her mother stands up and says a few words, which Evan only half listens to (she says it's because she doesn't know the guy and thus doesn't care to hear it, but this isn't true: it's because she can't look at her mother when she's crying). There's a moment of silence, and then the widow and the children shuffle off alone to the graveside.

There's a wake afterwards, which mostly consists of her mother dragging her away just when people start getting to the really good parts of stories, interspersed with attempts to convince the bartender to give her something to drink (Evan manages a Coke with a cherry in it, a Shirley Temple, and a glass of tonic water with bitters before she gives up). The alternative, though, is to go off with the other minors, who have all been corralled into a back room to watch cartoons by one (very harried looking) babysitter, who looks like she's about a year younger than Evan.

The departed's ex-wife (who has always blamed his work and not her personality for their breakup, for some inexplicable reason, and Lisa by extension) is holding court on one side of the room, set up at a table with two very skinny, nervous looking women. Her mother steers clear of her for as long as is humanly possible, until Evan is certain that they've talked to every other person in the room (sometimes twice, three times). It's probably not the best plan--she's already put down three glasses of whiskey and is jockeying for her fourth.

"So this is Greg House's baby?" she announces, without prologue, when they walk over, looking muzzily at Evan through squinty eyes. "Or do you know?" She cackles at her own joke, which nobody else seems to find amusing. Before she even knows she's doing it, Evan shifts forward, coming between them.

"Nice to see you again, Gilberta," her mother manages through set teeth, with a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm so sorry about George. Are you doing okay?"

The big woman waves her tumbler in a dismissive movement. "He's probably just pissed off he missed the party," she replies. "Don't you worry about me, sweetheart." (The way she says the word, it's nowhere near being a term of endearment).

"I'm sure this must be hard for you," she says soothingly (trying to get all of her stock expressions of grief out so she can just get the hell away from this woman as quickly as possible). "Let me know if I can do anything for you."

"Lend me your spare!" she says, cackling again. Her mother's normally calm hand is now locked in a death grip on Evan's shoulder, but she doesn't try to move. "You know how to share, right?"

Somehow (Evan will never remember, later), they manage to get away from this fresh Hell, and they practically bolt for the car.

Neither of them says anything for the first fifteen minutes of the long drive home, until her mother pulls the car into an abandoned parking lot, rubbing at her temples.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," she says, and Evan doesn't reply, looking out of the window. "Doctor Adams meant a lot to me, and I had an obligation to pay my respects, even if it meant putting up with that," she tries to bite her tongue, fails, "God-awful bitch."

"We wouldn't have to go through that if we were a normal family," Evan blurts, because it's the topmost thought in her mind (and she's never been good at not saying what she's thinking).

Her mother's hand is gone before she even sees it, leaving a sharp sting in her cheek. It is the first (and last) time any of her parents has ever raised a hand to her, and it hits her like a torpedo (later, when Evan's out, her mother sobs telling her poppa about it, and he clenches his jaw and fails to comfort her).

"You're too young to understand," she says quietly, wiping a tear from her cheek. She thinks about it, amends. "You're too young to know enough to decide. And you'll never be old enough to talk to your mother like that."

She puts the car back into drive, taking them back out onto the road, and neither of them speaks until she pulls off again, almost two hours later. This time, they're at a diner. They walk in and sit down, and her mother orders them the special, something that comes with a milkshake and sounds like it's going to give them twin heart attacks before they even get home.

Without saying anything, Evan gets out of the booth, walking around the table to sit on her mother's side. She laces their fingers together; and, after a moment, her mother rests her head on her shoulder.

Evan doesn't look when she feels tears soaking through her shirt (but she doesn't turn away, either).

### we come and we go

His friends start psyching him up (or out, as the case may be) before he ever even submits his resume.

"I heard he gets his patients drunk," one advises him.

"I heard he decked his fellow in the lobby of the hospital," his old roommate calls to say.

By email, from a colleague: "Of course, you know about the time he made something like a hundred and fifty applicants play Survivor for one spot, right?"

"It was three spots," one of the rejected tells him at a conference. "I quit when we had to wash his car."

"He saved my life," a patient tells him when she overhears him talking about it, "and if I ever see him again, I'll kill that sorry son of a bitch."

He goes to the interview anyway, possibly because he is criminally insane (but after all, you only live once).

"You're not nervous?" he asks as he comes in (fifteen minutes late).

"No," he replies, feeling it out.

"If you really wanted the job, you'd be pissing your pants in terror right now," he tells him.

"Would pissing my pants help me get the job?" he parries.

"If I said it would, would you do it?" An unexpected counterattack.

He pretends to consider it for a moment. "No." He wins the first point.

He looks down at what is probably supposed to be his list of questions, but it looks more like last week's New England Journal of Medicine. "Any children, incontinent pets, clingy spouses, or dying relatives?"

"You can't ask me that," he replies, light but firm.

He shrugs. "I can ask you anything I like."

"Doesn't mean that I have to answer," he tells him, and the gloves are off.

"Must be kids," he philosophizes. "Probably high maintenance ones that can't go a day without dragging Daddy away from work."

He didn't want to have to, but it's time for the make or break. "Jeremy and I are very happy without any kids, thanks."

He's supposed to fall all over himself apologizing, but it doesn't work. Instead, he just gets a funny little smile on his face and goes on with the interview.

Two weeks later, totally without warning, Jacob Harris becomes the newest member of the Princeton Plainsboro Diagnostics Department (and he really isn't sure how he feels about that).

There's an awkward sort of welcoming party for him and the other new fellow, who turns out to be the very, very nervous, very, very young Dr. Nayar, at a bar downtown. The current fellow, Dr. Brinker, shows up (as does the head of oncology, for some strange reason), but their boss is, of course, nowhere to be seen.

The oncologist leaves early, muttering something about piano lessons, and Nayar is right behind him, not really bothering with an excuse. The night devolves into him and Brinker shooting whiskey, which is perfectly fine by the both of them.

"No matter what it says on his diplomas, never, ever call him Doctor House," Brinker warns, waving an empty shot glass at him. "You'll never hear the end of it." Jacob gives him an uncomprehending look. "He changed his name when he got married," he explains, indicating James's empty chair.

Everything suddenly makes so much more sense to Jacob (or maybe it's just the tequila).

"He's shameless," Brinker continues. "He hired Preeti because she's Indian--"

"She's a girl, too, so that's double points," Jacob interjects.

"Right. He hired me because I got caught cheating in med school--and apparently I'm not the only one." He pauses, looking Jacob over. "But I can't figure out why he hired you."

He raises his glass in a toast. "I'm the fag."

Brinker shrugs, clinking his own shot against it. "Hey, man, whatever gets you the job."

It's not a week into their employment before Dr. Nayar finds herself completely and utterly offended by her boss.

She throws her bag down on the table in front of Jacob and Brinker. "He asked me where I parked my elephant!"

Brinker goes back to his article. "I hope it wasn't in employee parking. If it steps on my car, you're paying damages."

She makes little offended clucking sounds at Brinker, too angry to bother with a silly thing like words.

"If you think it was that inappropriate, take it up with the Dean of Medicine," Jacob advises her.

This is apparently a ridiculous suggestion, and Nayar makes all sorts of new, angrier noises. "The Dean of Medicine is the last person I would possibly go to!" she says in a panic.

"Why not?" he asks, trying to sound soothing. "She's probably not going to bite you."

"Hard," Brinker adds.

She rolls her eyes, as if to ask whether he just fell off the pumpkin truck. "She's his wife!"

Jacob looks to Brinker for a reaction shot, but this is apparently not news to him. The plot thickens, Jacob thinks to himself (except that it's not really that--it's more like the plot appears).

The good doctor in question appears out of nowhere, whistling something rather funereal.

"Aren't you supposed to be in the clinic?" Nayar asks (in a far more accusatory manner than the question requires).

"Why would I go to the clinic?" he replies, aping surprise. "I have everything I need here," he tells them, indicating each of them in turn with his cane, "dermatology and dubious morals, neurology and naan, infectious disease and interior decorating."

Nayar looks as if her head might explode at any moment, but he goes on. "I have a surprise for you, my children. Persistent headaches, nausea, and tunnel vision." He tosses a chart onto the table, and Brinker snags it.

"Probably drugs or alcohol," Nayar says dismissively.

"Tox screen's clean," Brinker replies.

"Retinitis pigmentosa explains the vision loss, eyestrain explains the headaches," Jacob opines.

The boss shoots him down. "Doesn't explain the papilledema."

"You already know what this is, don't you?" Nayar asks, more out of anger than anything else. "You're just playing with us."

"Of course I am," he replies. "But by the time we see another case of it, you'll have already quit in a storm of outrage. Get an LP and an MRI."

Nayar slams out of the room (no doubt she's overcome her compunctions about the Dean). Brinker just shrugs, pulling his lab coat on and standing up from the table.

Jacob's just about to be out the door, but his curiosity sucks him back in. "The head of oncology is your husband," he says, which was supposed to be a question, but didn't quite make it.

He seems to see where this is going already, waving at him to hurry his train of thought into the station. Brinker, too, is three steps ahead of him, putting his hand over his face in an "oh dear god, not this again" gesture.

"The Dean of Medicine is your wife," he continues. He waits for a reaction, but he doesn't get one. "I don't get it," he blurts finally.

His boss gives him a frankly evil smile. "Let me draw you a chart."

By the end of the week, Dr. Nayar has quit in the predicted storm of outrage (no one is surprised, except James, who now owes Brinker fifty bucks). Jacob isn't so quick to cut and run, despite the fact that he's been the butt of fifteen separate gay jokes (he's keeping a tally--it might be useful in his sexual harassment claim). It's weird, it's stressful, it's more hassle than he really needs--but he's intrigued, and that's good enough for now.

### worse in black and white

They go to the coffee shop around the corner. It's for strategic reasons--both of them hate it in equal amounts--so if this conversation completely ruins it for them, so much the better.

Greg orders the first thing on the menu, which turns out tasting like cinnamon exploded (not in a good way); from the look on her face, Stacy's done much the same thing (he can't even make a joke about it, which is the first bad sign of many).

They don't talk for several minutes; Greg takes the time to stir about seven sugar packets into his beverage (it doesn't help, but it is somewhat distracting, which probably makes it worth the four bucks).

"So what's new?" he finally asks, pushing the paper cup aside.

Stacy makes a noise of impatience. "We haven't spoken in fourteen years, and you're asking what's new?"

"That's old," he replies, shrugging.

She raises her hands in a gesture of capitulation. "I go to work. I come home to my husband."

"What a coincidence," Greg says to his latte.

"I heard that you and James," she starts, but loses her footing halfway through, "got... married."

He smiles, mostly to himself. "You really don't know the half of it."

She pushes her coffee away; she must be agitated if she's letting that remark slide without any further investigation. "Greg, why are we doing this?"

He doesn't look at her as he speaks, his attention seemingly focused on a nearby ficus. "I've heard tell that, once upon a time, there were people who broke up," he tells it, "and then, later, they got to be friends."

Stacy holds the bridge of her nose. "We were never friends to start with," she says, the words sounding just a little too much like she's rehearsed them. "Why should we start now?"

He sighs. "I don't know. Maybe it's different now," he says, throwing up his hands in a gesture of capitulation.

She starts laughing, and he knows he'd be better off to just get up and walk away. "Why? You've changed?" The laughter gets a little on the hysterical side. "You don't even know what that word means."

He hears her leaving before he sees her, but his eyes don't seem to want to turn in her direction. "Stacy," he calls to her, his tone far more pleading than he'd like it to be.

"Have a nice life," she tells him. "Don't call me again."

He sits alone in the coffee shop; no matter what he tries, he can't get the taste of cinnamon out of his mouth.

### after the dream of falling

"You ruined me, Lisa," he is telling her, gritting his teeth against waves of pain.

"You did it to yourself," she is shouting. The force of her anger is shaking the entire house down, pieces of their lives crashing to the ground.

She is turning into some kind of horrible monster, and he is running away from her, stumbling and tripping on the leg she crippled. She is catching him, devouring him.

He stirs against her, and she startles awake, flinching away from his touch.

The needle is going into his arm, and it's better than morphine, it's better than ketamine, it's better than sex, it's better than living. He is floating, flying. He is nowhere and everywhere at once. It is the most peaceful, content, and sane he has felt in ten--twenty--thirty--forty years.

His eyes blink open, and his stomach lurches when he realizes that it hasn't been real. He puts his face into his pillow, trying not to let his tears escape.

James is standing in the middle of an empty room. There are no doors. There are no windows. No one knows he is there. No one can hear him. He is kicking and pulling at the door, he is screaming and crying, but he knows deep down that he will never, ever leave this room.

He wakes up gasping and panting. His skin is uncomfortably warm, his face flushed and red. Lisa puts the back of her cool hand against his forehead, and his eyelids flutter shut. He feels the rough touch of Greg's stubble as he drops a kiss on his burning cheek.

Lisa gives Greg a look, and they leave him, Lisa to dress, Greg to search the cabinets for the aspirin. He gives James the pills (found behind the bread crumbs, three cabinets away from the rest of the medicine), coaxing him with cool water. He mutters something grateful yet slightly delirious, slipping back to sleep.

Greg catches Lisa watching them, and he stands up to see her off. She doesn't mention that his eyes are red and swollen, and he doesn't think about why she can't seem to look him in the eye. She slips her arms around him, and he pulls her close, nestling his face in her soft hair.

### I'm gonna stand guard

"You're not wearing that."

"What's wrong with it? Mom bought it for me."

"I know she did. But you're not wearing that."

"Dad, I'm sixteen years old."

"Which is exactly why you're not wearing that."

"I'm going out with my friends. What do you expect me to wear, a burqa?"

"Do you have a burqa?"

"Dad."

"What? You should make those boys, you know, work for it."

"Dad!"

"Just a second. If you're patient, I think we can just manage a hijab."

"It's not funny."

"Of course it's not funny. It's fashion, and fashion is a very, very serious matter."

"Ha, ha."

"You could wear that blue thing with the ruffles. You always looked cute in that."

"Dad, I outgrew that when I was seven."

"Then it's probably about the same size as that shirt."

"Jesus, fine! I'll change! You win!"

"Don't worry, muffin. When you've had as much practice as I have, then maybe you can beat me."

### one-trick pony

It starts, as these sorts of things tend to, in a hotel bar. It's a quiet place, not too impressive, much along the lines of all these chain hotels, filled with the sorts of people you always find in them--harried travelers, college kids, lonely singles, friends of the bartender.

She's older than him and, quite frankly, kind of intimidating, which he probably shouldn't find so devastatingly attractive (but he undoubtedly does). She buys him a drink, and they chat about nothing--jobs, wine, things you talk about to people you meet in bars like this. He very much knows where all this is heading (and she's not making much of a secret of it), but for some reason, against his better judgment, he just lets it keep going on.

"I should get home," James says finally, with just the tiniest bit of reluctance creeping, unwanted, into his voice.

"You could do that," she replies, finishing her glass, "or you could come upstairs."

And James just really doesn't have a good answer for that.

He finds himself, some minutes later, being pushed up against the wall of the elevator, her teeth making marks he won't be able to explain on his throat. The better, nobler part of him is screaming that this is all terrifically wrong, but the realistic part of him is mostly just concentrating on not falling over.

Somehow, they manage to stumble into her hotel room. He realizes that this is probably the part where he should start having serious doubts; unfortunately, all he can really think about is how amazing it all is.

She wastes no time in pressing him down against the scratchy coverlet on the bed, stripping him of his trousers (he wants to protest at the way she callously throws them into the corner, ruining the creases, but he's got other things on his mind).

She doesn't bother with the accustomed formalities (foreplay, underwear, names, all that other unnecessary stuff), straddling him almost immediately. She sinks down around him, throwing her head back, and he's enamored of the way her entire upper body seems to blush, right down into the plunging neckline of her dress. As if she can read his mind, she reaches up and plucks the bow of her halter, and he's pleased to note that it extends all the way down over her full, gorgeous breasts. It quickly becomes irrelevant, though, because then she's moving, sliding up and down on him, and James's eyes are too busy rolling back in his head to notice anything.

It's a Herculean effort to keep himself from losing control; he sets his teeth, trying not to think about baseball (he tried it once, but only got as far as men in tight pants before it failed). It apparently doesn't matter, though, because all of a sudden, she's coming, shaking and grinding down on him hard, gasping out his name. The feeling of her clenching around him is more than he needs, and he follows her, exhausted.

All he can find the strength to do is just lie there. "I never told you my name," he says, after some minutes.

Lisa stretches out next to him, rolling her shoulders into the bed. "I could have read it on the receipt at the bar."

"I paid cash," he says in rebuttal.

She waves at him dismissively. "You can pretend I'm a psychic, if that does it for you."

He rolls toward her. "I don't think I've ever had that particular fantasy."

"Greg is going to be pissed," she tells him, crossing her arms behind her head.

"Hey, it was your idea."

"Next time I'll pick you both up," she assures him, punctuating it with a peck on the cheek.

### paranoia blues

It's not that she doesn't understand why her parents keep doing it. Between them, her parents have (she counted) over thirty years of higher education under their belts. She doesn't believe that any of them ever had a doubt in their minds as to what they were going to do with their lives, and it's not so strange that they expect her to be the same way.

"I had already decided to be an oncologist by the time I was your age," her dad says, apropos of nothing, while she's just trying to do her human A&amp;P homework.

"I wanted to be a doctor ever since I was little," her mother says wistfully, picking up one of the many, many toy stethoscopes someone gave her when she was a child (which seem to churn up from the depths of her closet with annoying regularity).

These statements are always punctuated with a "It's okay if you don't know," or a "But you're still so young." Evan has more or less decided that they don't know they're driving her crazy (because if they knew, then that would just be too damn mean).

To their credit, none of her parents has ever tried to push her towards medicine. In fact, Poppa seems to be making a concerted effort to push her away as much as he can. He leaves brochures for liberal arts colleges lying around the house, opened to pages about history and sociology (Evan's still a little convinced, however, that it might all just be some grand scheme based on principles of reverse psychology).

People who are not her parents, however, seem to have no problem at all telling her she should be a doctor, as if she's got some grand genetic advantage in the field. It seems from the moment she introduces herself that it's completely obvious that she'll go into medicine, like who her parents are makes it a done deal. She's always polite, but some people can be downright rude about it (it's almost as bad as the people who ask where her two boyfriends are).

It probably goes without saying, but she doesn't want to be a doctor, nor work in a hospital in any capacity. To be fair, she also doesn't want to be a lawyer, a chimney sweep, or a carnival barker. Right now, she doesn't want to be anything except a high school student.

So maybe this helps explain why, that summer, she spends a month up to her ass in tamarisk in the middle of nowhere, Texas, building a hiking trail.

The hours are long, the sun is blisteringly hot, and the pay is quite literally non-existent; but Evan's finding that she doesn't mind. It's an escape--nobody knows who she is, and certainly nobody cares who her parents are. Everybody else in her crew seems to want to be a park ranger, and they more or less take it as read that Evan's one of them.

One day at lunch, she tries to explain why she's here to her crew leader (who, to his credit, accepted the revelation of Evan's parentage with an understated "that's kinda fucked up, you know").

"It's like everybody assumes I've been born and bred just to help people," she says, capping off her diatribe.

"Darling, if you didn't have a drive to help people, you'd be sitting at home by the pool eating Cheetos," he tells her.

She hates that he's right (but it doesn't make her any more eager to study medicine).

Evan goes back to digging up tamarisk, hoping that one day she'll see the light.

### but now I'm a mountain range

Lisa can't remember the last time she actually wanted to be at work.

It's not that she doesn't love her job (or at least that's what she keeps telling herself). It's just that it's tiring, somewhat thankless, often frustrating, and basically prone to eating up her entire life. She always had this idea in her head that if she could only get everything sorted out, get the whole system running and tuned just the way she likes it, she could just let it run, like a pocket watch or something. But every time she hits that point, that magical instant, something new pops out of place.

It doesn't really help matters that she's painfully aware that she's getting too old for this. Buckley made some crack about 8 track tapes at the last staff meeting, and a full five members of her staff (not residents, who can be forgiven just about any mental lapse not relating to patient care, but actual, real live, honest-to-god doctors) stared at her, dumbfounded. Her new head of oncology was born in 1992, for Christ's sake--what's wrong with this picture?

She doesn't make a habit of expressing her discontent to anyone related to work (James is the exception, but he doesn't really count), but she has the feeling it's starting to get around. Some days she thinks the whole hospital knows, and they're just waiting on eggshells for the day she snaps and runs screaming through the clinic (little does she know there's already a pool going for it).

So she tells herself there's no harm in shopping around, testing the waters. The recruiter for the blandly named New Jersey Medical Network has footed the bill for four business lunches, one cocktail hour, and a weekend seminar. It's curiously like a budding relationship; he wants to take it to the next level, but she's still not sure what that means for her.

It's not as if the offer's not attractive. Twenty-five hour work weeks (knowing this game, she adds back half as much, but even that's not bad), good benefits, car service, and (this is the main selling point), no more dealing with Greg (whom she loves with her entire existence, but whom she is never more than a day and a half from murdering in cold blood with a tongue depressor). It's one more step away from being a doctor, and she's more than accepted that--she hasn't even given a consult in six months, so what's the difference? And it's a long damn drive, but she's done worse.

But (this is the main sticking point) can she really open the closed circuit of their lives? She's been at Princeton Plainsboro since Clinton was in office. She just doesn't know that she can leave. James did it, but all he really did was move across campus (not that it mattered, because no one could last more than a few weeks in his old office with Greg popping over the balcony every ten minutes).

And she is fully aware that she is very, very spoiled. Everyone on the poly message boards where she lurks (her secret internet obsession ever since she had to give up dating sites--she's got to get her trainwreck syndrome out somewhere) seems to be going through some fresh hell every other day. But she and her boys, they're old news. Hardly anyone turns up for an interview without knowing about it; and, out of those who are tactless enough to bring it up during, eighty-five percent aren't qualified anyway. It's in no way secret, so the gossip mill has long since tired of talking about it (unlike what Brenda said that Marc in peds said that Emma in the clinic said that Lily in oncology said about Parker and his new assistant Rick--she makes a note to tell Chase about it).

Thinking it over one night, she's suddenly startled by the fact that she might be afraid what other people think of her lifestyle.

That's the last straw; she signs the contract within a week.

James and Evan are happy for her, but Greg isn't, and he makes his displeasure known (much as she expected). It's annoyingly like old times again, except that his public comments about her anatomy have gotten a lot more specific (and a lot more accurate). It shouldn't have to end in a shouting match, but it (inevitably) does.

It turns personal fast, and they scream things at each other that no one is supposed to say to any other human, ever. Lisa hadn't known that so much tension had built between them until it suddenly released, the straw and the camel all over again.

He slams out, startling the nurses even more than usual as he storms through the clinic, and (not for the first time) Lisa curses the glass walls for failing to shield her.

It certainly doesn't make it any easier, but it doesn't stop her, either. The days drag on in that bizarre slow fashion, like the lead up to Christmas, where the wait completely evaporates when the day gets there. There is the requisite awkward going-away party, the gifts that are supposed to be a surprise (but haven't been for months), the crocodile tears she sheds upon receiving them. The only real shock of the day is when Greg shows up, quiet and sullen yet repentant, and doesn't make a single obnoxious comment the entire time.

She slips his cool hand into hers in the parking lot afterwards, dragging him closer by it (the way high school girls do). He gives her a small, surreptitious smile, lifting both their arms and draping them around her shoulders.

Then he makes a comment about her tits, and Lisa figures it's all really going to be okay.

### I just got out in the nick of time

"He's an idiot," Greg announces, chucking his bag basketball-style onto the couch.

"Who's an idiot?" Lisa asks, not looking away from the computer.

"Your successor," he spits. "Who the hell else would it be?"

She rolls her eyes up towards the ceiling. "What did you do?"

"_I_ didn't do anything," he says defiantly (and she knows in that instant that, yes, he did). "It's not my fault that the patient's relatives are all idiots."

"It never is," she says levelly, sipping her tea.

"And that bastard Schaff wouldn't know justifiable circumstances if they bit him on the ass," he continues from the kitchen.

She makes a vague noise of affirmation, closing her browser window and standing up.

"I mean, who do you have to fuck to save lives around here?" he rants.

"Not me," she tells him, smiling sweetly. He glares at her, but she just kisses him on the cheek and walks away.

"Like I didn't see that one coming," he calls after her.

"No, you didn't," she calls back (he hates it when she's right).

  


### killer wants to go to college

"Son of a bitch," her dad swears under his breath, dropping a box of books unceremoniously onto the floor.

"I give it a seven out of ten," Poppa says, reaching into his bag for more potato chips. Dad gives him a look that could kill small animals on contact.

Mom chucks the car keys at him. "If you're not going to help, go find a parking space."

Poppa salutes, taking his leave as fast as his legs and cane will carry him.

"I can take it from here, really," Evan protests, but they're having none of it.

As Mom and Dad attack her dorm room (Poppa turns up an hour and a half later with coffee, pretending not to hear when he's asked where he's been), Evan's suitemates filter in and out with their families--Erica, her roommate; Julia, a slightly nervous, bookish blonde; Natalie, whose first act is to put a giant poster of a videogame character in the bathroom, for some unfathomable reason.

Within two hours, her room is fully outfitted and decorated (with only the slightest shouting). Her mom puts out the finishing touch, a picture of her parents, on her dresser (Poppa has already carried Dad off somewhere, possibly to wade in a fountain). Evan's sure this is the time for tearful exhortations to call or write, not to drink too much, and everything else that comes with it. To her surprise, she just kisses her on the top of the head and picks up her purse.

"Aren't you going to tell me not to do drugs and get a tattoo?" Evan asks.

"You're a good kid," she says, "and God knows you're going to do whatever you want anyway, no matter what I say." She regards her daughter for a moment. "You're not planning to get a tattoo, are you?"

Evan doesn't answer, hugging her tightly.

That night, Erica convinces them that the university's opening ceremonies are really a colossal waste of time, and they sit in their suite's common area, passing around wine coolers that someone (Julia, surprisingly enough) smuggled in.

"I wonder what they're going to talk about at convocation," Julia wonders aloud, passing out the booze.

Erica stands, holding her drink like a microphone. "Welcome to the Wentworth Miller Academy of Liberal Arts and Sciences, where our commitment is to liberal arts, and also sciences. The Wentworth Miller Academy of Liberal Arts and Sciences thanks you for joining our student body, as well as for the very large checks your parents have sent us. As long as those checks keep clearing, we are going to pretend to ignore the fact that you will spend the next four years getting high and writing papers that bear a striking resemblance to what a single monkey at a typewriter would produce if you gave him ten minutes. Now we will sing the Alma Mater, just as soon as somebody can remember what it is. Thank you." She takes a flourishing bow to great applause.

They talk about the normal introductory things after that lead in--high schools, relationships, planned majors (Evan wears her undecided like a badge of honor)--their conversation made somewhat easier with the application of alcohol

"I can tell you one thing," Erica announces, "I am damn glad to be out of my parents' house."

"My dad just got a new girlfriend this summer," Natalie moans. "She's a screamer."

"You think it's bad to hear your parents having sex," Evan says into her bottle, laughing to herself.

"So, is your dad the one with the big eyebrows or the one with the cane?" Erica asks, with typical diplomacy, studying the picture of them on Evan's dresser.

Evan snorts. "Yes."

Erica's brow furrows. "So that woman is--"

"My mom," she answers, taking another swig.

"I'm lost," she says, throwing up her hands.

Evan's been waiting for (anticipating, dreading) this moment. "When a man and a woman and another man love each other very much," she starts, very slowly.

"Oh!" Natalie says brightly. "So they're poly."

Evan blinks. It's the fastest that anybody's ever come around. "Yeah."

"I'm still lost," Erica reminds them.

"It's when more than two people are in a relationship at once," Natalie explains.

Julia wrinkles her nose. "That sounds complicated."

"It is," Natalie and Evan answer at once.

"So are you--" Erica asks, sounding fascinated.

"Not a chance," Evan is quick to reply.

"If it works," she says, with finality, finishing her drink.

Evan smiles to herself. "It does."

### I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet

They sit outside the Sausage Hut, eating what Greg is pretty sure is a symbol of his own latent (okay, maybe not so latent) homosexuality.

"You've changed, House," he says, accusingly.

"You're late," Greg replies. "I haven't been 'House' in twenty years."

The other man sees his opening. "Exactly. You've gotten soft."

Greg snorts. "You, on the other hand, haven't changed a bit."

Moriarty shrugs. "Go figure. I'm a figment of your imagination."

"Exactly," Greg declares, gesturing with his bratwurst. "So if I've gone soft, then it follows that you should have too."

"Damn," he deadpans, "you caught me."

Greg waits for a long moment. "Well, that didn't work."

He looks around for some clue to what the hell Greg is talking about. "What?"

"I was trying to see if I could make you disappear in a puff of logic," he replies through a mouth full of sauerkraut.

He rolls his eyes. "Very cute. 'Cause I haven't heard that one before, or anything."

Greg balls up his wrapper, makes a perfect three-point basket into the trashcan. "Why are you here, anyway?"

"I dunno. You must not have made that turn."

"Goddammit," he swears, more out of annoyance at the thought of his medical bills than anything else.

The bastard just won't let up. "You knew it was too icy for the bike, didn't you?"

"You have changed, Jack," Greg says, picking up his cane and walking back to the car. "I don't remember you being nearly this annoying last time."

### run that body down

When the semester finally ends, Evan's dodging one missed final (scary), a suitemate trying to sleep with her (scarier), and a boyfriend trying to marry her (terrifying); but all that seems to go crashing down the minute she gets home.

Or, more accurately, her poppa's motorcycle goes crashing through a line of road cones into a pothole, landing with almost comical precision on his bad leg.

She goes straight to the hospital, past the docile receptionists (the House legend never dies), up to his room, just in time to hear Dr. Chase utter the word they've always shied away from. He's trying to be as clinical as possible, but his voice is cracking.

"We can have him in surgery in half an hour," Chase offers, "or we can wait until he wakes up."

There's something very significant she's missing in the glances going about the room, and Evan just looks among the three of them, chewing her lower lip.

"He's not going to be happy," Dad says gravely.

"He'll live," Mom tells him, smiling weakly. "He always does."

Evan slips her fingers into her mother's and squeezes her hand, lost for words.

* * *

They sit on a blanket on the beach, listening to the sound of the waves crashing.

"Am I hallucinating?" he asks his daughter suspiciously.

She doesn't answer for a moment, busy with her melting ice cream. "Probably," she replies, licking her fingers. "I'll bet it's better than the alternative, though."

"If this isn't a hallucination, you need to put some damn clothes on," he tells her, without malice, stretching out and putting his hands behind his head.

Evan rolls her eyes. "What was I thinking, exposing my ankles to the whole world?"

"I can see your nipples."

"Can not!"

"Can too. But it doesn't matter, because this is definitely a hallucination."

"How can you tell?"

"Who ever heard of a white sand beach in New Jersey?"

* * *

Two days, and Poppa still hasn't woken up. With the covers pulled up, she can pretend that the hulk of his leg is still there, horrible and constant and (she didn't know this until now) reassuring.

She packs her mom and dad (stuck in engagements they can't get out of, and sadly useless anyway) off with copious promises that they'll be paged if he even breathes funny. Evan goes home herself for the first time that night, her quick nap and shower break turning into ten hours.

Early on the morning of the third day, he opens his eyes on an empty room. Everything hurts, including his hair, and there's a giant, rather angry looking lizard in the corner who seems to have something really important to tell him; but other than that, he seems fine.

Evan tears in within ten minutes, a feat only accomplished by running six red lights. He's already antagonizing nurses (a good sign), demanding someone summon animal control (not as good), and calling for someone named Stacy (probably bad).

Evan only has vague memories of her, a dark headed woman with a soft drawl who always seemed very cold. She tries not to make a mystery out of why Poppa wants her and not anyone else, digging the number out of Mom's old address book. That number sends her to a different one, and three tries later she finally gets through to a lawyer's office. This Stacy character is (mercifully) there, and she promises Evan she'll drop everything and come up at once.

Stacy turns up around noon, takes one look at the dark circles under Evan's eyes, and hurries her off to the nearest diner. Evan notices the circle where her wedding ring should be immediately when they sit down for lunch (always her father's daughter), and she instantly dislikes her.

They talk about the kind of basic, boilerplate stuff that adults always talk to college students about--classes, majors, career plans. It's oddly jarring to Evan; that whole world suddenly seems so far away. Stacy deliberately dances around the issue at hand until the waitress is taking their plates.

"Ever since Mark died," she starts awkwardly (Evan kicks herself), but breaks off. "I guess it's always my burden to help fix Greg, since I helped break him in the first place."

* * *

"We didn't have a choice," he tells her for what must be the fifth time.

"Of course we did," she parries weakly, not really wanting to fight, but not wanting to let him win. "I wanted to be there when he woke up."

And he loses right there, because there's no rebuttal to a statement like that. He kisses her tears, but she shies away from him. It feels like cheating, somehow, without him between them, warm and strong and angry.

They put their best masks on in the morning, appearing for all the world like they're actually happy.

They've practiced.

* * *

Stacy sits beside Greg's bed for six hours, holding one hand while Evan holds the other. It's not an easy thing--something's off with the anesthesia, and he keeps tossing from one side to the other, talking to people who aren't there. In the quiet moments, Evan watches her. It's clear she loves him, but Evan isn't worried anymore.

When he finally comes out of it, he blinks hard, looking at them. "You put on a shirt," he tells his daughter. "I'm glad."

Evan decides she's just gonna let that one slide, kissing him on the head. "You scared me."

"You think you were scared?" He turns, looking nonplussed at Stacy's presence. "Hey," is all he says, but it seems to carry much more weight than it should.

"Hey," Stacy returns, stroking his hair.

"You don't need to be here," he tells her, softly.

"Maybe you don't need me to be here," she replies, squeezing his hand, "but maybe I do."

He doesn't answer, looking away from her. A confused look comes over his face. "My leg doesn't hurt," he tells them, with all the gravity of a judge pronouncing a death sentence. Evan and Stacy look at each other. He sits up, wincing at the stiffness in his back, and reaches for his thigh.

"Son of a bitch," is all he can think to say.

* * *

Two days after Poppa wakes up, Evan's boyfriend shows up unannounced (which he probably thinks is very romantic, but really just means that Evan will have to cook instead of going to China Palace for every meal). He's got a suitcase in one hand and something that looks suspiciously like a cookie bouquet in the other.

It's so awkward, her glaring at Poppa as Poppa cuts him down relentlessly. Even better, he presses her hand in the hallway and tells her he's sure Poppa will be "more cheerful" when he's better.

When she says goodnight to her Poppa that night, he unexpectedly dips his hand into her shirt pocket; reaching in, she finds a fifty dollar bill.

"Marry somebody else," he whispers. "Anybody else." Evan makes a face, so he goes on. "I'm serious. What about that nice girl who works at the coffee shop downstairs? She seems single, and she makes a good latte."

"Pop, I'm not gay."

"Are you sure?"

"More or less." She smiles. "I don't think you have anything to worry about, anyway."

"Good," he told her, closing his eyes.

She's still smiling when she closes the door behind her. "What did I tell you?" her boyfriend says, proud to be right. When she laughs at him, he just beams, never getting the joke.

* * *

Dad and Mom are just in time to bring him back home, still wearing stale airplane clothes when they wheel him out. They both look completely exhausted, and neither of them seems in a big hurry to speak to the other.

The house is busier than Evan can ever remember it being. There's Mom, Dad, the nurse, her assistant, Evan's boyfriend, the assistant's boyfriend, and more casseroles (who are these casseroles for? are there people they know who actually believe that this incident is depriving them of home-cooked meals?) than she has ever seen in her life.

Within five minutes, Mom is yelling at Dad, Dad is yelling at the nurse, the assistant's boyfriend is flicking ash onto the carpet, while Poppa sits in the middle, headphones on. Evan's boyfriend kisses her on the cheek and goes out to get dinner (whatever it is, it better go good with casserole).

Evan locks herself in her room and just stares at the wall for an hour and a half.

* * *

Her boyfriend wakes her up with breakfast on the morning of his last day with her (it's breakfast casserole, and it's already past noon, but it's the thought that counts, apparently). Poppa's watching General Hospital, so they go out to say their goodbyes on the snowy back porch. Timidly, she starts to tell him how scared she is for Poppa, so glad of an outlet at last. It almost hurts to pull it out of herself, letting go of all the things she's bottled up, like she's chipping at her soul. Once she starts, she finds out she can't stop; and for a long moment, she is relieved.

"Look on the bright side," he replies to her monologue, big stupid smile on his face. "It's not like you don't have a spare."

It's the kind of joke that she herself would make, but it's the just the wrong thing said in just the wrong way at just the wrong time.

He has the gall to be shocked at the slowly reddening handprint on his face.

Greg notices when he slams the door on his way out; but Luke is just about to tell Laura about his third evil identical twin, so he lets it slide for the moment. He leans out of the back door after his soap is over. "Tell your boyfriend--"

"What boyfriend?" she says, entirely too calmly.

"Aren't you cold?" he asks, because it's the first thing that comes to his head (and it's something he can actually help with).

"No," she replies, looking straight ahead (even though she's been outside for forty-five minutes without a coat).

Greg wheels himself into the closet where James has cleverly hidden the marijuana ("for therapeutic use"; Greg thinks this probably qualifies).

Out on the porch, he lights the joint, takes a drag, passes; Evan inhales without stopping to think about it (he'll have to remember to have her mother talk to her about that). There's something about actually sitting down, breathing in the cold air (with or without THC), that makes the tight composure she's been maintaining shatter.

After all these years, he's still awkward around crying women, but he tucks his blanket in around her and holds her hand until she's better.

* * *

He stares at it for a half an hour, wishing that he knew something appropriate to say.

For almost half his life, he's known exactly what to expect, exactly where the boundaries lie. He has known just which way not to move, just which places cannot be touched, just what the penalties are for forgetting.

Greg runs his palm over the flat of his thigh, and he feels nothing, nothing except the smooth expanse of the artificial leg and a slight pressure where it joins his body.

"I'm too damn old for this," he finally manages to mutter, pulling his pants on.

* * *

On New Year's Eve, Evan finally goes back to school (just for a few days, and having given her mother seven different phone numbers at which she can be reached, including her best friend's brother's band's bassist).

Her friends waste absolutely no time in reminding her that her life is seriously lacking in loud music and delicious beverages, as well as in men who are not her boyfriend (and who have the full complement of legs).

When her dad calls the next day at noon, she just rolls over and ignores it, failing to feel the slightest bit guilty.

* * *

"I'm not going back," he tells her as he hoists himself into the car after his first physical therapy session.

"Fine," she says, buckling her seatbelt. "Pussy," she adds under her breath.

Poppa gives her a look that says she can just drop dead.

"I know it can be tough for the elderly to cope with change," Evan says with mock sweetness.

"If you're trying to piss me off, it's not going to work. My patience is legendary."

"I'm sure you're really busy with your stories and your crochet."

"Shut up and drive the car."

Wonder beyond wonders, he goes back.

### but I'm having a good time

Greg pauses as they round the third corner of their square route, temporarily blinded by the morning sun.

"Race you back to the house?" Lisa offers, running in place.

"You're on," he replies, grinning. "I'll even give you a head start."

She scoffs at that. "You only wish I needed one."

"Ready?" he asks, adopting a sprinter's pose.

"Bring it on," she tells him, and they're off.

Greg takes the early lead, but Lisa gains on him quickly, passing him up after a half a block or so. All of a sudden, Greg comes to a stop, holding his leg where the prosthesis meets it, sucking in air in hissing gasps.

"What's wrong?" she asks, all the worst-case scenarios playing out in her mind, automatically reaching for her cell phone and dialing the hospital's number from memory.

Just as she's about to hit the call button, Greg winks at her and takes off in a dead sprint.

"You son of a bitch!" she shouts after him, struggling to catch up.

"Hey, you're the one who fell for it!" he calls back to her, dropping out of sight around the last corner.

Lisa's never been so happy to lose before.

### that's why god made the movies

"You can say it," Greg assures him, tying his shoes.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You think this is gay."

James looks away, trying to pretend like he's not pouting. "If I thought it was gay, I wouldn't have bought you season tickets."

"Buying your husband tickets to the theatre sounds pretty gay to me."

James doesn't have an answer for that.

"Relax," Greg tells him, reaching over to straighten his tie, "no one thinks you're straight."

He rolls his eyes, giving him the "I am so very put upon" expression that he has come quite close to perfecting.

"I promise not to call you Big Daddy," Greg assures him.

"Is this actually about my perceived fear of having half of Trenton figure out I'm bisexual, or is it just 'Bait Jimmy Day'?"

"Every day is 'Bait Jimmy Day,'" he replies, looking positively shocked that he would ever ask such an obvious question. "And everyone knows that bisexuality is a myth. You don't want to look gay. There's a difference."

James shakes his head. "Then what are you?"

Greg gives him a wide smile. "Extraordinarily greedy."

Evan picks that moment to come in, still fastening her earrings. "We're going to be late."

"We can go as soon as your father stops being self-loathing," Greg tells her.

"Fine," she says with an exaggerated sigh, "but I don't think the schedule for the 2050 season is out yet."

James throws up his hands. "I'm," he searches for the right phrase, waving his hands in his favorite 'you people are all crazy' gesture, "a big fag. Can we go now?"

"That wasn't very convincing," Evan says to Greg.

"If you want him to be much more convincing, you're going to have to leave," he replies.

She sighs. "Then we really will miss the show."

"Are you done?" James asks them.

"Of course not," Greg says, aghast.

"Never," Evan agrees.

"Whenever you're ready, I'll be in the car," James sighs.

### the book of my vanishing memory

She knows she's hit on a good idea when her advisor's eyes light up. The tiny woman immediately jumps from behind her desk, pulling book after book from the shelves (Evan very nearly loses an eye to _Southeastern Indians_). Evan can't really make heads or tails out of everything she's spouting off about cultural continuity and heteronormativity, but she thinks it probably means the literature review is going to be much easier than she hoped.

She spends the entire ride home trying to articulate exactly what she's going to say to them. When she finally hits upon it, she hurriedly repeats it into her voice recorder, but it sounds so stupid when she plays it back that she erases the tape.

What can she possibly say? "Hi Mom, hi Dad, hi Pop, can I write my thesis about your aberrant lifestyle?" "Hey, folks, dinner looks great, oh by the way, would you mind stepping into this display case?" She almost feels like she's exploiting them just to get a grade, and god knows that's the last thing she'd ever want.

So, of course, when she gets home, she doesn't say anything and, on top of that, starts acting impossibly nervous (so much so that even she realizes). Poppa (obviously) knows something is up, and he keeps giving her that "you'd better tell me before I release the hounds" look all through dinner. Her mother catches him at it, throwing up her hands and making her best "my family's ways are mysterious unto me" face. Dad just keeps feeding everyone.

After dinner, when she finally gets out what's bothering her (not what she meant to say, not anything that any normal person would say in the situation, but, then again, a normal person wouldn't be in the situation to start with), Dad rolls his eyes toward heaven in a silent prayer of relief and goes back to his crossword puzzle. Mom has a hundred questions about confidentiality and fair use, half of which Evan has been expecting (the other half involve legality issues that she hadn't even considered not considering, and the whole conversation sends her slinking back to her ethics textbook).

"Twenty bucks," Poppa says.

"What?" Evan asks, hoping she's not understanding correctly.

"My likeness rights are worth at least that much," he replies huffily.

She sighs and turns to her dad. "Can I borrow twenty dollars?" He takes out his wallet and gives her forty. She passes one of the bills to her poppa, who tucks it into his shirt pocket.

"You should have haggled," he chides, "I'd have done it for ten."

It takes six weeks before she can even get the literature search done (the interlibrary loan office must hate her now). When she thinks she's really ready, she sits them each down individually (she knows a potential train wreck when she sees one), nervously arranging them in the den with her questions and her borrowed equipment (the operation of which she is only vaguely familiar with).

"This is the beginning of an oral history interview for the Wentworth Miller University for Liberal Arts and Sciences Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Please state your name, address, and occupation, and please affirm that you will allow the contents of this tape to be used for academic research."

"Lisa, 325 West Grambling Road, Princeton, New Jersey, 38946, Chief of Operations for the New Jersey Medical Network, and I will allow the contents of this tape to be used for academic research only. Portions of this tape may not be duplicated or broadcast."

"James, Princeton, New Jersey. I'm an oncologist in private practice, and, uh, you can use this tape for whatever you want."

"Help! Help! I've been kidnapped by an anthropologist! If anyone hears this, please send help! I'm at 325 West Grambling, and--oh god! She's coming at me!"

"Poppa."

"Oh, all right. You're no fun anymore. Gregory, Princeton. Department of Diagnostic Medicine, Princeton Plainsboro. You can use the tape to further your dark ends. Happy now?"

"How did you meet?" she asks, ticking it off on her list of questions.

"Your mom was my boss, and she introduced me to your pop."

"James and I met at a conference, but I don't think he remembers that. Greg I met in college."

"Naked co-ed gymnastics competition. Your mom came first."

"What did you think of them at first?"

"Your mom was," James adjusts his collar, making sure Lisa isn't listening, "terrifying."

"Greg played lacrosse. I don't think I have to spell it out for you."

"Your pop is, well, he is what he is."

"James was very solicitous and very kind. I thought he was gay."

"Limber, yet strong. Everything you could want in a mate."

"Poppa, be serious for five minutes, please."

"I've never been serious before. Why start now?"

Evan rolls her eyes, moving on. "Had you ever considered a polyandrous relationship before you met your current partners?"

James's laugh lasts a full fifteen seconds.

"Never, um," Lisa pauses, looking for the most delicate way to put it, "for more than an evening."

Greg shrugs. "If you can have the best of both worlds, why not take them?"

The interviews drag on. James takes to rambling whenever he's uncomfortable, Lisa answers paragraph long questions as if a simple yes is all that's required, and Greg says things that she's never, ever, ever going to be able to print.

The last two questions aren't on her approved list, and she surreptitiously shuts the recorder off before asking them. "When did you realize you were in love?"

"James and Greg brought me breakfast in bed. Then I went downstairs and found out that they had messed up my entire kitchen doing it, which I had just cleaned, and--you'll love this--somehow managed to put the toaster in the dishwasher. And I thought 'Those stupid bastards are my boys,' and it didn't even occur to me to get upset."

"When I stopped going to hookers. And I am serious about that one."

James lets out a long sigh. "I think I always was."

"Would you do it again?"

"In a heartbeat," Lisa swears.

"I think I might try polygyny next," Greg answers flippantly. "Then again, I'm not as young as I used to be."

James looks at her like she's grown an extra head. "Are you crazy?"

The actual hard work starts after that. It's harder than she's ever imagined to write about it; the background is fine, but how do you write objectively about yourself? How do you put down everything that's so natural to you on paper as if it's an aberration worthy to be studied? How do you quantify the looks people give you in the supermarket versus knowing that you'll always be loved?

When it's finally time to present the damn thing, she's not ready (she has her doubts that she ever will be). She tries to tell herself she's not subconsciously trying to fail as she tears into the parking lot five minutes late, but it doesn't work.

Only ten minutes after her presentation is supposed to have started, she slips into the back of her classroom. The student scheduled after her is already well underway; catching Evan's eye, her professor taps her watch, silently chastising her.

She's still not ready as she makes her shaky legs carry her to the front of the room. She calls up her presentation on the laptop attached to the projector; the old machine takes a minute to think about it, and Evan almost hopes it won't work. There's no such luck, though, and her file opens just as it should.

She picks up the system's remote and takes her place behind the lectern. When she clicks the button, Evan and her parents appear, filling the screen. She takes a deep breath and puts on an entirely false smile to cover her nerves. "Certain Southeastern Indian tribes say that everyone needs two men to raise them--a father to provide discipline and instruction, and a daddy to hug them. In practice, it really doesn't work that way."

### something unstoppable is set into motion

She's not expecting to fall in love; she's really just expecting pizza (since that is what she ordered, after all). Evan doesn't believe in love at first sight, or the thunderbolt, or even in destiny (she hardly believes in anything but evolution, for Christ's sake), but she opens the door, and there it is.

The one thing that she's really sure of is that she can't really be love. This isn't the way that love is. Love doesn't drop fully formed from the sky. Love is whatever works. Love is never getting pissed off just because somebody felt that they didn't need to say, "I'm sorry." Love, above all, is complicated.

She's a hundred dollars poorer and ten pounds fatter before she actually gets the nerve up to ask him out; but he doesn't shut the door in her face, and that's enough for the moment.

After a lead-in like that, it would be nice for her to be able to say that the first date was just as earth shattering. Unfortunately, it's just like most of the other first dates she's been on (painfully impersonal, interminably long, impossibly frustrating).

The first kiss, however, is another story entirely.

When she wakes up in his bed the next morning, he's watching her, and he blushes when she catches him. In that moment, she knows (not how, not why, but she knows she knows) that her life will never be the same again.

### this is the long distance call

"You want me to fly where to do what?"

"It's just one weekend."

"I haven't said no yet--you don't have to start begging already. I just don't know if I heard that right."

"I want you to come to my wedding."

"Are you sure you have the right number?"

"Doctor Chase."

"All right, all right, no need to pull out the formalities. Is it that boy with the bad haircut?"

"It's not that bad."

"All I'm saying is maybe you should take him to the barber."

"Duly noted."

"I'm personally offended, you know that?"

"What ever for?"

"You said you were going to marry me."

"You never asked me."

"Well, I didn't know there was going to be a run on it, or I would have stepped up my plans."

"I don't think Theresa would like that much, anyway."

"Oh, yeah, well--"

"Don't tell me. No more Theresa?"

"Moved on to Elle, I'm afraid."

"That's a shame. I liked her."

"Elle is better in every respect, and it has been said that her very touch causes the flowers to grow--"

"She just walked into the room, isn't she?"

"How ever did you guess?"

"So will you come?"

"For you, anything."

"Especially when it involves a trip to Vegas?"

"You read my mind."

"You should bring Elle, too."

"Yeah, well, that may not be the most viable plan--"

"You're absolutely incorrigible."

"If I wasn't, I wouldn't be your favorite non-uncle."

"Sad, but so true."

### and the roots of rhythm remain

Lisa nervously adjusts her daughter's sleeves (for the fourteenth time today), smoothing them into place over her shoulders.

"Erica is still at the salon, right?" she asks, going for the veil next.

Evan catches her hands and brings them down. "She's on her way back. Why don't you sit down and have a glass of wine?"

Lisa snorts. "If you want me to drink until I stop worrying, you're going to have to have them send up about three more bottles."

* * *

"Why didn't we think of Vegas?" Greg asks James, adjusting his tie in the groom's sitting room. "We could have had Elvis marry us and everything!"

"I've always thought our wedding was missing a certain rhinestone quotient," he deadpans.

"There was your aunt. I think she was wearing more than ten Elvii."

James stares at him like he's got two heads. "I'm amazed you still remember that."

"Of course I do. I'm still seeing spots."

* * *

"You're not going to toss your garter, are you?"

Evan rolls her eyes. "Mom, I'm not really anxious for the entire reception hall to see my thighs."

"You're not going to do the money dance?"

"This is a six hundred dollar dress. Anybody who pins anything to it is answering to my Manolo Blahniks."

"_That's_ my girl."

* * *

"Is it really worth it?"

Greg looks up at the question, nonplussed. "What?"

Ethan stares at himself in the mirror, clearly in a world of his own. "How can you deal with waking up next to one person every day for the rest of your life?"

"You want the other one," he says dismissively, returning to this paper. "I have no idea."

* * *

"We've forgotten something," Erica announces as she breezes into the door.

Lisa looks at her expectantly, waiting for the explanation.

"Good luck charm," Evan explains smoothly. "If we keep telling ourselves we've got everything under control, we'll have forgotten something. So it should also work in reverse, right?"

Erica cocks an eyebrow at her, producing a small box from one of her various bags. "I meant that you left your tiara at the salon, but I guess that works too."

"It was very convincing," her mother assures her (very charitably).

* * *

"Ethan, look at me." James snaps his fingers in front of the groom's face. "I think he's having a panic attack."

Greg takes a pill bottle from his jacket and passes it over, not taking his eyes off his paper.

"You brought _Klonopin_?" he asks in disbelief.

He shrugs. "I couldn't score any Valium."

James makes a gesture of extreme annoyance, checking his watch. "It's too late for sedation. It's time to go."

With a lot of patience (and a little bit of waving shiny things and beer bottles in front of his face), they manage to get Ethan safely into the elevator. As they pass, Greg taps out a rhythm on the door to Evan's room.

"The salmon flies at midnight," he calls.

There is silence from inside the room, so he tries it again. In the middle of his third attempt, the door opens.

"We heard you the first time," Lisa tells him. "What the hell kind of secret pass phrase is that?"

He purses his lips. "You're not supposed to critique the language of spies."

"Greg, we're going to be late," James yells from the elevator.

Greg studiously ignores it. "And anyway, you didn't give the right answer."

"If you don't get here before the door closes, I'm finding a younger man in the casino."

"You're supposed to say--"

"We're going to move to Trinidad!"

Lisa cuts him off. "What? The urchin crawls at noon?"

"There will be suntan oil!"

"Have you no sense of the surreptitious, Lisa?"

"I'm going to pick one with a bigger--"

"Dammit, James, I'm coming!"

"That's what he said!"

Lisa pecks him on the cheek. "Go."

He rolls his eyes and is off, shouting homoerotic threats back at James.

She shuts the door behind her. "I believe the coast is clear."

"You're sure you want to do this?" Erica asks Evan.

"Yes," she replies, letting out a breath she didn't know she had been holding.

"Really sure?" she tries. "I'm sure you could still get some of your deposits back."

"It's harder than you think," Lisa opines. "Some of those contracts were very well written."

"Do you know a good lawyer?" Erica asks her. "Because I could get my uncle, but--"

"Dammit, we're doing this thing," Evan says, just a little bit cross.

Erica holds her hands up in a gesture of surrender. "All I needed to hear."

Lisa places Evan's bouquet between her hands and gives her tiara one final adjustment. She looks misty-eyed at her for a long moment.

"If you do decide to bail, run left," she says, finally. "It's closer to the bar that way."

* * *

"Got the ring?" the wedding coordinator asks the best man as the bridal party gathers.

"Right here," Mark replies, patting his pocket.

"Got the flowers?"

"All distributed and pinned," Erica answers.

"Got the escorts?"

"Locked and loaded," Greg says, putting on his sunglasses.

"Aren't we missing something?" Evan asks.

The coordinator scratches his nose, thinking. He looks at his list, making neat check marks next to all the necessary items.

"Where's the groom?" James asks suddenly.

The coordinator pokes his head into the chapel, then pulls it back out again. "Who had him last?"

"I would hope that would be the bride," Greg quips, earning an elbow jab from James. "What? I've got your daughter's best interests at heart here."

"Goddammit," Lisa says irritably. "Find him," she tells James.

"A mystery to solve!" Greg announces, taking his sunglasses off dramatically, before taking James by the arm and dragging him off in the direction of the casino.

"You said go left, right?" Evan asks her mother nervously.

* * *

Ethan is finally located at one of the hotel's seven bars, staring blankly into his glass.

"You're doing it wrong," Greg says, taking the water from his unresisting hands.

"You're late," James tells him, but it doesn't seem to do much good.

"I don't know if I can do it," he tells them, still looking where his glass had been.

"Should have thought of that before you booked the chapel," Greg says with a sigh.

He looks pleadingly at Greg, and for a moment (the moment before he remembers that this silly son of a bitch is perilously close to, if not ruining her life, seriously putting a damper on his daughter's weekend), James can almost feel sorry for the poor kid.

"Is it worth it?" he asks. "Is it really worth giving up everything else to be married to one person for the rest of your life?"

"We've been over this," Greg replies, turning him towards James by the shoulders. "You still want the other one."

James has absolutely no idea how to answer the question (he's almost tempted to tell him to go find someone who didn't fuck it up three times before getting it right). "Everything else becomes nothing at all," he says finally.

Ethan looks helplessly back to Greg, as if appealing for a second opinion. Greg slips his sunglasses over his eyes. "It's a short walk in a sweet breeze." He smiles. "And if you don't go through with it, well, ever had your ass beaten by a one-legged man and a guy in a Daffy Duck tie?"

"Greg," James says disapprovingly, but then he seems distracted. "You said you liked this tie."

He rolls his eyes. "Not my point."

"You bought me this tie!"

"You look fetching. Now shut up." He takes Ethan by the shoulders, turning him in the direction of the chapel and giving him a not-so-gentle push.

* * *

Lisa gives a long (probably audible) sigh of relief when Ethan finally slips into his place. Thankfully, there's not much time for the guests to mutter about it, because the back doors swing open soon after he's on his mark. Two attendants do not much of a procession make, but the look on Evan's face when she saunters in (she's certainly never been a step pause step sort of girl), her fathers on either arm, says that she owns this (and that, above everything else, she is determined to have a damn good time).

They leave her at the altar with a kiss on either cheek, taking up their places in the front row. "Piece of cake," Greg whispers to Lisa when they join her. She looks at James, who squeezes her hand and gives her a look that clearly says she's better off not asking.

Thankfully (or sadly, depending on your particular point of view) the officiant isn't Elvis, but the ceremony goes well anyway. Rings are exchanged, the groom weeps openly (from happiness, Lisa very much hopes), Evan looks far more radiant than anyone really has a right to, there is a kiss, people (politely) cheer.

Afterwards, the party adjourns to one of the more classy of the seven bars for dancing and overpriced cocktails. Greg surprises the hell out of everyone by asking his daughter for the first dance, taking her hand with amazing aplomb.

"I wasn't expecting this," Evan tells him as they waltz.

"I've got legs, don't I?" he replies. "They tell me it's tradition."

"Yeah, but you can't dance worth a damn," she laughs.

"Touché."

James picks that moment to cut in, twirling her away in the showiest fashion that he knows.

"I'm proud of you," he tells her after a particularly low dip. "That's why I'm not going to tell you the same thing your grandma said to me on the occasion of my first wedding."

"What was that?" she can't help asking.

"'Many happy returns of the day,'" he says, grinning.

"I'm so sorry we didn't get to meet any sooner," Lisa tells Ethan's father (only mentally adding, "but if Greg and James didn't scare you off, I guess nothing will").

"Let me introduce you to my wife, Samantha," he says, indicating a tall, statuesque woman with blonde hair.

"How do you do?" she says politely, shaking Lisa's hand.

"And this is my wife, Marlena," he adds, introducing a short brunette, and it takes everything bit of Lisa's considerable social grace not to die laughing.

"Feeling any better?" James asks his new son-in-law.

"Much," he replies. "I just kind of had a moment there."

"That's good," he tells him, patting him on the shoulder. "Because it may not look it, but we really would have beaten your ass."

Ethan gulps visibly (luckily, he is quickly saved by the cake).

As the party winds down and the guests begin to slip away, the bride and groom sweep off to their honeymoon suite (Greg has a number of untoward comments about it, but Lisa keeps him well clear of the rest of the wedding party). Soon, it's only Greg, Lisa, and James left standing.

"What the hell was that for?" James demands, rubbing at his upper arm.

"I was making sure it wasn't all a dream," Greg tells him.

"You're supposed to pinch yourself."

He shrugs. "Six of one."

"So what now?" Lisa asks them.

"We have many peaceful years of sex on the living room couch in our empty nest to look forward to, I believe," Greg opines.

James sighs. "I think she meant right now."

He looks at his watch. "Given current airport security, we could be home in nine hours or less."

"We could go play the slots," James offers, ignoring him.

"No thanks," Lisa says, with only the tiniest snort. "Between you two, I've already done enough gambling to last me a lifetime."

"Yeah," Greg allows, putting his arm around her, "but you won, didn't you?"

She looks back and forth between the two of them, slipping her hand into James's. "I guess I did."

**Author's Note:**

> Make sure to view the lovely artwork created for this story!
> 
> [](http://house-bigbang.dreamwidth.org/11063.html)  
> by [](http://mem_vermelha.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://mem_vermelha.livejournal.com/)**mem_vermelha**
> 
> [](http://house-bigbang.dreamwidth.org/10925.html)  
> by [](http://hjsnapepm.livejournal.com/profile)[**hjsnapepm**](http://hjsnapepm.livejournal.com/)  
> 


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